Tiger gets the shaft on monster shot

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, February 5, 2000

PEBBLE BEACH - Word is out on the PGA Tour: When Tiger Woods plays, heads will roll.

It's just that nobody thought the head in question would be on Woods' driver.

Woods provided the Kodak moment Friday when his typically huge drive at the 16th tee at Poppy Hills not only produced a 280-yard, perfectly placed bomb - it also tore the head off Woods' driver.

The club head sailed about 50 yards, over the white tees, and almost into the barranca.

Woods stared at the stick in his hand, perplexed by what had just happened and feeling mighty weird about a funky follow-through from a suddenly lighter club. He played to the crowd with a muscle flex.

"It was a weird feeling. Going up the fairway I had to get another club out to make sure my hands felt a club head again. Because when you lose that it feels like your next shot the head is going to fly off. I wanted to get that out of my system as fast as possible."

On the 16th fairway, Woods asked some golf writers who were following him to see if a rules official could be contacted, as the 24-year-old superstar wanted to know if he could use the driver of his amateur partner, Jerry Chang, on the 18th tee. Fortunately for Woods, the 17th hole was a par-3 and the broken club would not affect his game seriously.

Woods got word from officials that he could use a backup driver for the round, if need be, because he did not break the club in anger, but he could not use Chang's club.

Unable to get to a backup driver in time, Woods used a 3-wood on the 500-yard 18th hole and hit a shorter drive than usual. He tried to hit another 3-wood to the green and was short and right. He chipped on and two-putted for a par, breaking a string of three consecutive birdies and finishing with an impressive 68, two shots off the lead as he made good on his bid to contend for a sixth consecutive tour win.

"I wanted to end up at 3 or 4-under, I figured that would put me right in the ballgame," Woods said.

Woods has played with the now-broken driver since the winter of '98 ("it's been pretty good for me," he said) but added he has a backup driver that "flies exactly the same, same everything."

By the way, Woods birdied No. 16, anyway.

ADD TIGER: The entire tour is trying to break Woods' streak, and Frenchman Jean Van de Velde tried to appeal to Woods' sense of magnanimity.

"He's got to leave a few for his friends, doesn't he?" Van de Velde said. "He can't have them all."

DEJA VU: If Steve Scott's name sounds familiar, harken back to the 1996 U.S. Amateur final. There was Tiger Woods. There was Steve Scott. There were 15,000 people and a closely fought match that, though Woods finally took it for his third consecutive U.S. Amateur title, few who watched could truly forget.

"I still get goose bumps just thinking about it," said Scott, who merely exchanged nods with Woods on the driving range Friday.

Scott is here playing in his first PGA Tour event as a professional, having received an invitation from the tournament office last Friday. Wife Kristi - you remember, the pony-tailed girlfriend who caddied that day for Steve - scrounged up a coupon for lodging, and the two Floridians were off to California.

Kristi is still caddying for Steve, who likes her style and her price, and he credited her with helping him rebound from 2-over to 5-under in the first round.

"I bogeyed my first two holes after we restarted," he said. "She said take some deep breaths, just let's get refocused here. . . . I attribute a lot to her."

Poppy Hills, because of its shelter from the elements, played the easiest of the three courses, with an average score of 72.6. Pebble Beach, most open to the wind, played the hardest, with an average of 75.1.

ETC.: CBS announced it will broadcast Monday's final round on a tape-delayed basis on the West Coast, airing from 3-4:30 p.m. . . . Costner enjoyed some give-and-take with the crowd, especially a woman who asked Costner to sign her T-shirt right on her chest. Costner asked her to protect her, ahem, bosom while he did so, and when a young boy called out for Costner, the actor responded: "Just a second, kid, I'm doing something very delicate here!" &lt;

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